AdvertisementUkraine warWorldUnited States & CanadaTrump says Ukraine talks with Putin off for now, doesn’t want ‘wasted meeting’
The US president’s comments are the latest twist in his stop-and-go effort to resolve the war
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US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that his plan for a swift meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin was on hold because he doesn’t want it to be a “waste of time”. It was the latest twist in Trump’s stop-and-go effort to resolve the war in Ukraine.
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The decision to hold off on the meeting in Budapest, Hungary, which Trump had announced last week, was made following a call on Monday between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
“I don’t want to have a wasted meeting,” Trump said. “I don’t want to have a waste of time – so we’ll see what happens.”
Trump’s hesitancy is likely to come as a relief to European leaders, who have accused Putin of stalling for time with diplomacy while trying to gain ground on the battlefield.
The leaders – including the British prime minister, French president and German chancellor – said they opposed any push to make Ukraine surrender land captured by Russian forces in return for peace, as Trump most recently has suggested.
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They also plan to push forward with plans to use billions of dollars in frozen Russian assets to help fund Ukraine’s war efforts, despite some misgivings about the legality and consequences of such a step.
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